Biographical Information

Christopher Robertson is Associate Dean for Research and Innovation and Professor of Law at the University of Arizona. He is affiliated faculty with the Petrie Flom Center for Health Care Policy, Bioethics and Biotechnology at Harvard. For 2016 - 2017, he is teaching at NYU Law and on sabbatical.

Professor Robertson is an expert in health law and the intersection of law and science. His research explores how the law affects decision making in domains of scientific uncertainty and misaligned incentives, which he calls "institutional epistemology." His work includes tort law, bioethics, the First Amendment, and corruption in healthcare and politics.

Robertson has co-edited two books, Nudging Health:  Behavioral Economics and Health Law (2016) and Blinding as a Solution to Bias:  Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law (2016). In 2017 Harvard University Press will publish his monograph, Paying for Ourselves:  The Ethics, Economics, and Law of Cost-Sharing in Health Insurance.

Blending legal, philosophical, and empirical methods, Robertson's more than 50 articles have been published in peer reviewed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine; Journal of the American College of Radiology; Biopreservation and Biobanking; Behavioral Science Policy; Journal of Legal Analysis; Journal of Law and Biosciences; Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; and Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, among others. His work has appeared in leading law reviews and specialty journals, as well as national media such as NPR's Marketplace, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal.

Robertson has received research support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Greenwall Foundation, and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. He leads the Law and Behavior Research Lab at the University of Arizona, is a member of the QuantLaw group, and is a founder of the Regulatory Science Program. He has long served on the clinical ethics committee for the academic medical center, as peer reviewer for leading journals, and on doctoral committees in several social science fields.

Robertson graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he also served as a Petrie Flom fellow and lecturer. He earned a doctorate in Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, where he also taught bioethics. For 2013-2014, he was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Robertson's legal practice has focused on complex litigation involving medical and scientific disputes, and he continues to work with lawyers needing expertise in the social science of decision making and the laws regulating healthcare, science, and corruption.

Representative Publications

• Paying for Ourselves:  The Ethics, Economics, and Law of Cost-Sharing in Health Insurance (forthcoming 2017).
• Regulating Off-Label Promotion - A Critical Test, 375 New Eng. J. Med. 2313, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1611755 (Dec. 15, 2016) (co-author, with Aaron S. Kesselheim), available at http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1611755.
• Nudging Health:  Behavioral Economics and Health Law (2016) (co-editor, with I. Glenn Cohen & Holly Fernandez Lynch).
• Blinding as a Solution to Bias:  Strengthening Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, and Law (2016) (co-editor, with Aaron S. Kesselheim).
• New DTCA Guidance - Enough to Empower Consumers?, 385 New Eng. J. Med. 1085 (Sept. 17, 2015), http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1508548.
• The Split Benefit:  The Painless Way to Put Skin Back in the Health Care Game, 98 Cornell L. Rev. 921 (2013).
• A Randomized Study of How Physicians Interpret Research Funding Disclosures, 369 New Eng. J. Med. 1119 (2012) (co-author, with Aaron S. Kesselheim et al.).
• Biased Advice, 60 Emory L.J. 653 (2011).
• Blind Expertise, 85 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 174 (2010).
• Complete List of Publications